People in the News/Awards -- July

A number of AAFP members received various honors and awards this past month.

Sean David, M.D., of Stanford, Calif., has been named the 2011-13 James C. Puffer, M.D./American Board of Family Medicine, or ABFM, Fellow at the Institute of Medicine, or IOM. David is a clinical associate professor of family and community medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Fellows are chosen based on their leadership potential in biomedical science, health care, health policy and medical professionalism and assist in the work of an IOM study committee or roundtable for two years.

FP James Loehr, M.D., of Ithaca, N.Y., has been appointed the AAFP's liaison to the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP. Loehr, who was an AAFP vaccine science fellow in 2009-10, succeeds Doug Campos-Outcalt, M.D., M.P.A., of Phoenix, as the Academy's liaison. Campos-Outcalt started a four-year term as a member of the ACIP on July 1.

A past recipient of the AAFP Foundation's Parke-Davis Teacher Development Award (now the Pfizer Teacher Development Award), Loehr practices at Cayuga Family Medicine with two other FPs.

The ACIP is scheduled to meet Oct. 25-26 in Atlanta.

Family physician Eduardo Sanchez, M.D., M.P.H., of Richardson, Texas, has been elected chair of the Partnership for Prevention Board of Directors. Sanchez, vice president and chief medical officer for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, will assume his new role in December.

Sanchez has held a number of leadership positions in public health and has chaired committees for the IOM, and the National Governors Association. A former commissioner of health at the Texas Department of State Health Services, he received the AAFP's Public Health Award for his outstanding contributions to improving the health not only of individual patients, but of entire populations.

Partnership for Prevention is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to disease prevention and health promotion.

The ABFM Board of Directors elected four new officers during the ABFM's spring board meeting. Warren Newton, M.D., M.P.H., of Chapel Hill, N.C., was named board chair; Samuel Jones, M.D., of Fairfax Station, Va., was named chair-elect; Arlene Brown, M.D., of Ruidoso, N.M., was named treasurer; and Michael Workings, M.D., of Detroit, was named member-at large on the board's executive committee. Each will serve a one-year term.

In addition, the ABFM board welcomed three new members: pediatrician Laura Brooks, M.D., of Lynchburg, Va.; FP James Kennedy, M.D., of Winter Park, Colo.; and FP Jimmy Hara, M.D., of Los Angeles. Each member will serve a five-year term.

Each winner receives $1,000; complimentary registration, airfare and lodging to attend the 2011 AAFP Scientific Assembly in Orlando, Fla.; and other recognition. The awards, which recognize recipients' exemplary patient care; interpersonal relationships with patients, physicians and faculty; and demonstrated leadership and community involvement, are made possible by a grant from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.